LEARNING YORUBA

I find it extremely important to understand my partner even when He speaks his own language. So I started to learn Yoruba. The video above is my first proper Yoruba lesson recorded by myself. My aim is to motivate myself with recording my progress and of course if I can help other white naija girls learning Yoruba then that's great.

What do I think about the language?

I think Yoruba is not an easy language in a way that you really have to be careful with the pronunciation. Yoruba is a tonal language and the same word can mean 4-5 different thinsg according to the right pronunciation.

I did some research about the language and I came across the following interesting facts:

· Yoruba is spoken by up to 30 million people in Africa
· Yorubaland extends across Nigeria, Benin Republic and Togo. (all in West Africa)
· 200 years ago Yoruba was transported to Latin America during the Atlantic Slave trade
· In Brazil, the Yoruba heritage is still very evident

Yoruba has certain special alphabets:
· e with a dot under the e pronounced eeh
· gb pronounced gbii
· with a dot under the o pronounced awwh
· s with a dot under the s pronounced shh
· a pronounced aah
· e pronounced like a in English

Thank you very much for your comment, especially because you are the first person ever that commented on my post. You can't imagine how happy I am now. I just told my husband a few days ago that I wasn't motivated any more because people are not even commenting. Thank you so much again! You made my day! I feel like God has answered my prayer by you! Ese e pupa!

hey dear. i just came across your blog. u r and your husband are so cute! and cute baby :) anyways, i wanted to say i speak Yoruba and taught my self from home and wanted you to check out my blog and also check the post i wrote about my journey in learning Yoruba. it may be useful to u :) good luck.www.oyinboafricanabeni.wordpress.com thats my blog :) take care

Hello Emese, what a wonderful job you are doing to learn Yoruba. I really wish you a happy married life in more years to come. I like your personality. I came across your blog when I was searching for my favourite song "Ba mi adun ko ko ka," I was really happy to see you and your friend singing it; so interesting. My advice for you on learning Yoruba, is this, try and start every conversation with your husband in Yoruba, and encourage him to respond to you in Yoruba. I know by now you are an expert of Yoruba language. God bless your family.

OMGGGG!!!! This is so beautiful! I am Yoruba myself and I was born in Nigeria but left to America at the age of five, so now at 15 I've kinda lost my "tongue" and the way I pronounce some words in our language and it sounds a little odd to my family members/relatives but I'm trying my best lol :)This is such a great inspiration for me and others because Yoruba is hard, especially being completely new to it and yes your right, the pronunciation is very important so keep up the great work! Even the thought of you wanting to learn Yoruba is all that matters. Please continue to upload more videos and maybe even cooking lessons? lol :) Lots of love from the USA!

I'm planning to record another video because my husband speaks Yoruba to my little one all the time and I know all those disciplining expressions. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, it's very funny. :)Thanks for support.Please like my facebook page.